Nina Totenberg
Nina Totenberg is NPR's award-winning legal affairs correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR's critically acclaimed newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition.
Totenberg's coverage of the Supreme Court and legal affairs has won her widespread recognition. She is often featured in documentaries — most recently RBG — that deal with issues before the court. As Newsweek put it, "The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the creme de la creme is Nina Totenberg."
In 1991, her ground-breaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges. NPR received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage — anchored by Totenberg — of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita Hill's allegations, and for Totenberg's reports and exclusive interview with Hill.
That same coverage earned Totenberg additional awards, including the Long Island University George Polk Award for excellence in journalism; the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting; the Carr Van Anda Award from the Scripps School of Journalism; and the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting, which also acknowledged her coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement.
Totenberg was named Broadcaster of the Year and honored with the 1998 Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcasting from the National Press Foundation. She is the first radio journalist to receive the award. She is also the recipient of the American Judicature Society's first-ever award honoring a career body of work in the field of journalism and the law. In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. The jurors of the award stated, "Ms. Totenberg broke the story of Judge (Douglas) Ginsburg's use of marijuana, raising issues of changing social values and credibility with careful perspective under deadline pressure."
Totenberg has been honored seven times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting and has received more than two dozen honorary degrees. On a lighter note, Esquire magazine twice named her one of the "Women We Love."
A frequent contributor on TV shows, she has also written for major newspapers and periodicals — among them, The New York Times Magazine, The Harvard Law Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and New York Magazine, and others.
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The court ruled that some crack cocaine offenders sentenced to harsh prison terms more than a decade ago cannot get their sentences reduced under a federal law designed to do just that. -
The justices noted that Congress is actively considering the question of including women in selective service registration and that women have been able to serve in combat roles for years.
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The court reversed the conviction of a sergeant who used his police car computer to access and then sell a license plate number in exchange for $5,000.
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The high court has agreed to consider a major rollback of abortion rights. The test case comes from Mississippi, where state law bans most abortions after 15 weeks.
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At the center of the case was a man whose guns were confiscated from his home. Justice Clarence Thomas noted the recognition that officers perform many civic tasks but they're not open-ended.
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The state law bans most abortions after 15 weeks. The lower courts blocked its enforcement, finding it in conflict with Roe v. Wade and subsequent abortion decisions.
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At issue is whether schools may punish students for speech that occurs online and off-campus but may affect school order. The case is the biggest test of student speech rights since 1969.
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The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a First Amendment case that involved a teenager suspended from her cheerleading squad for using profanities on Snapchat.
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At issue is whether schools can punish students for off-campus speech. At the center of the case is a teenager suspended from her cheerleading team after using a vulgarity on Snapchat.
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The Supreme Court says it will hear arguments next term in a major gun rights case. It will be the first time it has waded into the issue in more than 10 years.
